Competitive intelligence, as it relates to product assortment has been an important aspect of the retail business for decades. Today, consumers have tools that allow them to quickly research products across thousands of retailers. To be competitive in the retail industry, it is important that retailers have a comprehensive assortment of products for their store and for the product categories that the retailer cares about.
Conventionally, to determine what products retailers are carrying, websites associated with each of the retailers need to be manually browsed. However, many retailers carry a very large number of products on their catalog, often times in excess of 100,000 different stock keeping units (SKUs) associated with different products. Each SKU is often sold by many different retailers at different prices. Thus, this method is time consuming, not comprehensive, and leaves room for error. To this end, there is a need for improved systems and methods for retailers to identify products that their competitors carry and that they are not.